2016 interview with Socrates: US today is Athens’ empire of hypocrisy and hubris; will US public stand for obvious justice or remain oblivious to evil? (2 of ?)

“The strong do what power allows. The weak accept what they must.” – Athenian 415 BC envoy to the small government of Melos, with the offer to either join Athens’ empire with paying them tribute, or have all men executed, and everyone else sold into slavery. Melos politely declined Athens’ offer. Athens attacked, did exactly what they threatened, and resettled the emptied island with 500 Athenian colonists. – Melian Dialogue of Socrates’ contemporary historian, Thucydides.

language warning: Socrates and I speak in the same direct language that caused his execution for “corrupting the young.”

Socrates: Carl! Thank you for continuing our dialogue. We began discussing Greek history, with connections to your United States of today. I’d like us to continue that point for Americans’ “real-world” philosophical consideration.

Let’s pause here to summarize my society before comparing to the US of today: we used foreign subsidies/tribute-taxes and slavery to fund an expanding military empire. Empire ended with civil war, ignited by the hypocrisy of dominating other free societies while declaring our philosophy of personal freedom. Carl, would you agree this is a fair summary of Athens’ history?

C: Yes.

S: Good. Let’s compare one empire to another: yours.

Do you recognize how the US is subsidized with tribute-taxes and slavery to maintain a global military empire?

C: Yup. It’s called the “petrodollar” (and here): the US cut a deal with the Saud family (a family-owned country called Saudi Arabia) to sell oil only for dollars, then use profits to buy US debt securities. This strengthens the value of the dollar, and allows the US government to fund its empire by selling debt as US Treasuries. So, our subjects pay for our global empire by only using US currency, plow profits back to us as an investment for taxpayer-guaranteed interest, and in exchange we use our military to back their dictatorial fiefdom.

C: (one small chuckle) O.I.L. I shit you not, Soc, that’s what they called it: Operation Iraqi Liberation.

S: (extended laughter) And everyone bought that?!?

C: They had to change it when some people began laughing at the tragic-comedy; hubris as you Greeks called it. They renamed it OIF: Operation Iraqi “Freedom.” Here, let me show you Mugsys RapSheet’s 1-minute video:

S: Wow. Yeah, “Freedom” isn’t any less ironic. Talk about shaming and humiliating the victim for psychopathic pleasure.

Do Americans know much about dictators being “good boys” to their empire?

Our “leaders” roll the world with unlawful and lie-began wars, and Crimes Against Humanity for ongoing policy of poverty that’s killed over 400 million human beings just in the last 20 years (~75% children; more deaths than from all wars in Earth’s recorded history).

C: Dude! You’re the one into stating what we can clearly see! How the fuck would I know?

S: You’re right, we can’t see the future. But I am interested in your opinion (smiles).

C: (smile) Here’s what I see: everybody today can read compared with ~10% in your day. Polling data are overwhelming that Americans register something criminal in “leadership” and that corporate media lies. Some form of victory seems inevitable, but nobody I know has any objective data whether victory will be peaceful or violent, and when the tipping-point will occur.

S: So we can agree on the similarities of Athenian Empire to US Empire today: both engage in expanding empire, both demand a form of tribute-tax, both engage in hypocrisy, and the US is at risk of a form of civil war that ended Athens’ Empire.

C: Agreed.

S: (chuckles) The single person who swayed public judgment against me was a clever politician named Alcibiades. He played public ignorance and fears for his own advancement. He was a real dick, as you say. Oh, and so was Aristophanes.

The public were too stupid to see through Alcibiades. He would engage in our conversations in Athens as a young man, but like many lawyers, learned rhetoric to manipulate rather than reveal facts. I was blamed for “corrupting him,” of course, and “causing” his vices. He framed the “need” for more and more empire in a way your US oligarchs would embrace. Do you know how Thucydides quoted him, Carl?

C: No, I don’t know this one.

S: “We cannot fix the exact point at which our empire shall stop; we have reached a position in which we must not be content with retaining but must scheme to extend it, for, if we cease to rule others, we are in danger of being ruled.”

C: Wow.

S: Wow, indeed.

C: And Athens killed you rather than face their oligarchs truthfully and honorably.

S: Yes.

C: So the central question for Americans today is whether they have the integrity and courage to voice the obvious lawless hypocrisy of their “leaders,” or remain oblivious to evil. At stake is either a continuing evil empire, or danger of its collapse into civil war.

S: It’s truthful. They are criminals. The proper citizen response is to lawfully stop their crimes, especially those with Oaths that honor the clear rights and laws your country claims to be founded upon. This would seem to be central to military and government service.

S: No human is wise; none can see beyond what anyone can see with looking. Only God is wise. Have you found anyone who can point to the future with any certainty, any knowledge to give anyone any realistic encouragement? That’s what you asked for: words of encouragement.

Carl Herman is a National Board Certified Teacher of US Government, Economics, and History; also credentialed in Mathematics. He worked with both US political parties over 18 years and two UN Summits with the citizen’s lobby, RESULTS, for US domestic and foreign policy to end poverty. He can be reached at Carl_Herman@post.harvard.edu

Note:Examiner.com has blocked public access to my articles on their site (and from other whistleblowers), so some links in my previous work are blocked. If you’d like to search for those articles other sites may have republished, use words from the article title within the blocked link. Or, go tohttp://archive.org/web/, paste the expired link into the box, click “Browse history,” then click onto the screenshots of that page for each time it was screen-shot and uploaded to webarchive. I’ll update as “hobby time” allows; including my earliest work from 2009 to 2011 (blocked author pages: here, here).

Thanks, Carl. It’s great to hear from Socrates again. There’s one point where he knew his local society so well that he takes these facts for granted, and doesn’t know how badly they were distorted by partisan false historians in the early 19th century. It’s true that there was slavery in Athens as there was everywhere in the ancient world, not based on race but on people captured in war or by piracy or slave raids etc. But slavery played a very small role in the Athenian economy, representing maybe 5% of the work force, mostly in domestic service in Athenian homes. The one place were there was extensive slaver was in the famous Athenian silver mines at Laurium, which were almost all slave labor, as most mining was in the ancient world (a custom which survives in the dire conditions of labor inflicted on miners to this day, including in America). These mines were crucial to the Athenian imperial project once it got started because they paid for the fleet and bribes for foreign states (foreign aid) and all the rest, but slavey was not crucial or even important to the basic Athenian domestic economy. The idea that it was was concocted by British historians in the first decades of the 19th century who, in response to the French Revolution, were intent on smearing the world’s most famous ancient Democracy. A truly excellent book, Robin Osborne, Demos: The Discovery of Classical Attica (Cambridge University Press, 1985) lays out these facts, which Socrates takes for granted because he knew them as daily life and hasn’t wasted time reading these clown pseudo-historians.

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